So You're Sitting Here

So you're sitting here, stranded against a blank screen that looks on expectantly at a scrawling mind desperate to be blank. It's been looking for the last half-hour and it's disappointed, disgruntled even by the dry pencilmarks, dry in both substance and texture and you're sitting here and you're thinking that if the typewriter you bought because a beatnik friend bought one was working and you were drenched in its tapping monotone there mightn't be so many metaphorical sheets laying on the floor that if you were to get up and pace around to tange - like "tangible" - this shiftyass muse – or more like "intangible" - you might a) actually succeed and b) avoid waking up people you don't want to which, right about now, is pretty much everyone from your brother sleeping under the pale light of a desperate writer, to the neighbors, sleeping in the warmth of a couple, all the way to the rest of the neon-blazing, wind-blown city cavorting with a night that's spilling with unhappy faces looking for something, mostly someone really, to touch their soul, again mostly their genitals really.

It's a Friday night and the image is vivid in your head - the streets brimming with men with popped collars, untucked dress shirts with the top buttons undone, more hair gel than hair and an animal stride, strutting their stuff to the young girls with, mostly, too much make up, too few clothes, blown-up hair and wandering eyes - and you don't try to figure it out, because they're too many and you're just the one. It's been a straight twenty three days of hard work, dealing with books that have been selling, were once selling or will maybe one day sell, with agents that don't reply, co-agents that, thankfully, do and editors who chomp on half the shit you requested from the co-agents. This has been so bad that as you write about it, the will to go on (writing) evaporates slowly, like a cigarette left in the ash tray and you wouldn't say no to one right know, except you don't smoke, remember, you're just burning in an ash tray. Obviously, something's got you down. Maybe it's the bulshit pad-mouse-like thing that keeps moving your cursor up and making you type over what you've written. Maybe it's overwork, the late hour and the mellow tune you're playing or maybe it's the lack of recognition for the work you haven't put to paper yet, which, surprise surprise, nobody knows about and is hardly likely to find out about any time soon given your knack to convince yourself that you can write that shit any time, it's just that you don't know if this is credible and, besides, you haven't read up on your fantasy and crime yet so you can't really be sure what you got is good, not to mention that you're a little bit swamped right now, two four-hour jobs and all, travelling back and forth and getting about zero alone-time, but, really you're just scared shitless of being rejected.

Or maybe it's the typical - a young thing with black hair, a nice body and the most beautiful face you recall having seen.

Whatever it is, it's compelling and it's got you doing what you don't usually do, and doing it good as far as you're concerned. The clock ticks in your mind, slides on the watch and all you can think about is you should send this to her, because she is bound to appreciate it and maybe that's what you need - a good word now and again. Let's say a God exists. If he did, he would know (by God will he) that your melon's been spawning a bunch of those good words, but that doesn't seem to have helped - if anything it's been working against you, making you mull over what you've written anytime you actually feel like writing and deciding that, nope Sam, nope, you can't really write anything that good, I mean, look at this stale piece of crap you've written, by God (assuming he exists) it runs like a river in the dry season - thin and flat. Eventually, you come back to the hundred or so words you've written and deem them pretty good, spend some time culling and reflecting on the printed paper, add some detail here, Sam, remove this shit about the thing here, oh, and don't forget to tweak that speech there, really, cause it's about as real as a secret society from the sixteenth century controlling the world, and a little bit less even, which is saying a whole lot of something.

Your eyes are starting to sting and the music is getting kind of stale, plus your head is leaning to the left, but you're sort of infected now. You got to keep them coming, a thousand today, thousand tomorrow and again and again and one day you're gonna hear a fat lady sing and you can look back and say you did it, Sam, baby, you signed it, you're a goddamn writer and you're gonna buy a boat, dock it at your very own Slip F-18 and lay back in a beach chair, with an unbuttoned white shirt, catch some sun and keep at it. So keep them coming, Sam, keep them coming...